Let’s Talk: Doctor Strange

This week we are here to talk about Doctor Strange, which has just come out on Blu ray (spoilers follow).

Dr. Stephen Strange (not to be confused with noted literary magician Jonathan Strange) is a neurosurgeon who also happens to be an a-hole. One day, he is driving recklessly, like a-holes do and is in a car accident which ruins his ability to use his hands. Hands, as you are probably aware, are super useful when doing things like performing surgery, so his career is pretty much over.

He spends a lot of time moping and being super surly and extra dickish before searching the world for a cure. He eventually makes his way to a place called Kamar-Taj where Dr. Strange is introduced to The Ancient One, who teaches him about the astral plane, other dimensions, and the Multiverse! Nerd Tangent: The Multiverse has been a part of Marvel comics forever, and this is the first time we’ve really seen it in the movies, although Ant-Man did introduce another dimension (the Quantum Realm). In Marvel, the Multiverse contains different universes where stories can be unique to that universe. It’s why they can constantly reboot characters or story lines. For example, in the main Marvel Universe, Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes Spider-Man, but on Earth-65 Gwen Stacy gets bitten instead and becomes Spider-Gwen. End Nerd Tangent.

So anyways, the ability to harness and control energy from the Multiverse is referred to as “magic” and Dr. Strange takes to it quickly. He also learns to bend time with the use of a relic called the Eye of Agamotto (more on this later). He squares off with a bad guy named Kaecilus and his followers, whose goal is to merge our dimension with the Dark Dimension, which as you can probably surmise from its name is not a great dimension to be merging with, in a time bendy, multiple dimensiony finale.

The Eye of Agamotto is revealed to be an Infinity Stone, which is something your nerd may be excited about. The infinity stones are six immensely powerful objects, each tied to a different aspect of the universe. They are space, mind, reality, power, time, and soul. With the introduction of the Eye of Agamotto, the time stone, the Marvel Cinematic universe has revealed the location now of five of the six infinity stones as we make our way towards the announced Avengers: Infinity War movie in 2018. The other stones, which you might want to know so you can impress your nerd:

The Tesseract (The Space Stone): Currently in Asgard (where Thor is from)

The Mind Stone: Currently in Vision’s head

Aether (The Reality Stone): Currently in the Collector’s museum

The Power Stone: Used by Star-Lord (Peter Quill) to defeat Ronan the Accuser, currently in possession of the Nova Corps on Xander.